


Tiffs

by Denise



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-18
Updated: 2012-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-10 05:01:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Denise/pseuds/Denise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't all fun and games during the 50 years on the Odyssey</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tiffs

* * *

Disclaimer Stargate Sg-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author. This story may not be posted elsewhere without the consent of the author.

* * *

Waves lapped rhythmically against the dock pilings. The wind whispered softly through the fir trees. The scent of water, fish and pine drifted through the air. The sun was warm and the breeze refreshingly cool as it caressed her skin.

The calls of loons drifted across the water and a fish jumped, landing with a splash.  
Warmth spread through her body, relaxing and refreshing her as the laid in the deck chair, not even caring about the awkward angle of her feet. She sighed deeply, contentment spreading through her veins like warm honey.

She felt herself drift towards sleep and she didn't fight it, instead embracing the pull of Morpheus. Sleep was a refuge now. An escape from the unending monotony of their daily lives.

"You are not going to believe what I just saw." Cameron's voice crashed into her dream, tearing it into elusive and nebulous shreds.

Sam sighed and opened her eyes, indulging in shooting Cameron her patented Death Glare. "You went ahead and made that still, didn't you?" she asked.

All of them missed the comforts of home. And, while the Asgard beam technology could materialize about anything, what it made was only as good as the recipe plugged into the machine. And she had yet to quite perfect the recipe for things like pizza, Diet Coke and beer.

"What? No," he said, as he half sat on the edge of her work console. Sam, who had been reclining in her chair with her feet propped up on the counter, lowered them and sat up straight, doing her best to ignore the sharp sweaty aroma of her teammate. "They're doing it," he proclaimed, crossing his arms across his chest.

"It?"

"You know, IT." He accentuated the word, raising his eyebrows suggestively. When she still didn't respond, he uncrossed his arms. "It," he repeated, his hands making the timeless gesture of his forefinger poking into a circle made by the forefinger and thumb of his other hand.

"Ah," Sam nodded. "So Vala finally got through to him," Sam said, pretty sure that conspiratorial victory wouldn't be Cam's reaction if he'd discovered Teal'c and Daniel or, even scarier, Landry and Teal'c having sex.

Vala and Daniel were the two most obvious lovers for him to observe.

"Sure looks that way," he said. Sam noticed but didn't comment on the two spots of color on his cheeks. She just wasn't in the mood to tease him.

"Good for them," she said, tapping on her keyboard to reactivate it. Might as well get back to work.

"That's all you can say?"

"What do you want me to say?" she retorted.

"Well, it's Vala."

"Yeah."

"And Jackson."

"I got that," she said slowly.

"Together."

"Hard to have sex any other way."

"So you don't care?"

"They're both adults." She shrugged. "What they do is their business."

"She's a crook and a thief and she's—" Sam glared warningly. "Having sex," he corrected himself deliberately. "With him."

Sam shook her head. "I don't care."

"But—"

"Cam. We have been stuck here for a few months, and it might take us a few more for me to figure out how to get us out of this." He opened his mouth to talk and she held up her hand to quell his words. She was in no mood to listen to him complain – yet again – about their situation. "And, as soon as I fix this, we're going to be back in the timeline and the rest of the universe will have gone on without us. I’m not going to begrudge the two of them any more than I do figuring out how to make General Landry more plants or you more running shoes." She stared at him. "And neither will you," she warned.

"I'm not begrudging," he said, sliding off the counter and stepping towards the door. "But you can bet your ass I'm going to give him crap." He turned to walk out. "He may be getting laid, but I'm gonna get some entertainment out of this," he tossed over his shoulder, leaving her alone.

Sam watched him go and chuckled, shaking her head as she returned to work.

 

SSSSSSSSS

 

Vala stood outside the core interface room – which Daniel had dubbed 'Sam's Lab'. She hated this…asking for supplies. Yes, Sam was the one who'd mastered the Asgard repli-whatever to make them just about anything they needed. And yes, given that they had limited supplies, it made sense to keep track of what they were consuming even though Vala knew that the ship recycled pretty much everything – something she refused to think too much about. So she acknowledged their need to not use too much or waste.

But it still annoyed her that she had zero privacy. She was a grown woman and an adult and she shouldn't have to ask for anything.  She didn't understand why Sam couldn't just come up with something like they had on Earth, where she could shop on the computer and just order whatever she wanted. She'd suggested it several times only to have Sam roll her eyes and dismiss it.

She heard footsteps approaching and she stepped into the room, not wanting to be seen standing outside the door. She swore the men on this ship gossiped worse than any women she'd known.

"Vala," Sam glanced up. "Your stuff's over there," she said. Sam pointed towards a box in the corner.

"I do hope you've remembered everything," Vala said, giving into the part of her that railed at having her provisions doled out to her.

"If I didn't, you know where I am," Sam said, not looking up.

Vala ignored her, rifling through the box, inspecting some items. Spying a new top that she'd asked for, she pulled it out of the box, holding the royal blue garment up to check the size.

 

_"Come forward!" the First Prime ordered, one of his men prodding a frightened villager closer to the throne.  In a routine they were used to, a Jaffa brought forth a box of clothing and supplies, the annual gift of Qetesh to her loyal subjects._

_A man stumbled closer to the throne, a young girl close at his heels. Her hands clenched his pants, holding on so tightly that Vala could see that her knuckles were white. Qetesh watched her, her interest piqued by the child's attractive coloring. The father stopped, kneeling by the box. "Th…thank you my queen," he stuttered out, his voice barely above a whisper._

_Qetesh got to her feet and the girl shrank behind her father, clearly frightened. "What a beautiful child," Qetesh said, stepping down off the dais and towards the two people._   
_"You must be so proud," she said to the father, amused at how the man shrank from her, turning to keep himself between Qetesh and the girl. "Such a beautiful jewel."_

_The girl's red hair shone and glittered in the fire light, bright even though it was unwashed and twisted into a braid tied at the end with a bit of rag. And it was a piece of rag that was the same non-determined color as the sack like dress she was wearing. "Such a beautiful child should not be dressed like this."_

_She snapped her fingers and her lotar hurried forward, a small selection of silk dresses draped over her arms. She fell to her knees, holding up the dresses where Qetesh could easily reach them._

_Qetesh rifled through the silks, not caring as some fell to the floor in a shimmering pile. "This," she said, pulling a brilliant dark blue dress out of the pile. "This is for you, my child."_

_She held the dress in front of the girl, inwardly congratulating herself on her exquisite taste. The shade of blue accentuated the girl's pale skin, and made the red of her hair shine like a flame. "Beautiful. Just beautiful. Would you like to serve in my court, child?" she asked. "Perhaps train with my lotar."_

_The child merely stared at her, her body shaking and tears willing up in her eyes. "My queen, please, she…I fear she would not serve you well," the father said. "She is often disobedient and untrustworthy."_

_He pulled the girl away and got to his feet, shoving her behind him again. "Then she will learn the proper way to honor her queen," Qetesh said, her ire growing. Could they not see the wonderful boon she was offering?  She turned her attention to the girl. "Is that not what you want?" she asked, again holding out the dress.  "To wear fine silks and to serve your queen?"_

_The girl looked up at her, tears spilling from her eyes as she shook her head. "I want to stay with my father," she whispered._

_Qetesh felt her anger boil up and she snatched the dress away. "Keshta!" she yelled, calling her First Prime._

_"My queen?"_

_"There will be no more hand outs for these ungrateful wretches," she declared, sitting on her throne with a flourish._

_"Yes, my queen."_

_"And send those two to the mine. If they are too good to serve me in my palace, then I do not want them in my sight. Let them serve me unseen."_

 

_"NO! MY QUEEN! I BEG OF YOU! THE MINES ARE DEATH! NO! SPARE MY DAUGHTER, PLEASE!"_

 

Shaken by the memory, Vala crammed the top back into the box, pushing it away as if the very sight of it sickened her. Her shaking hands disturbed some of the items in the box and a few items fell out, scattering onto the deck.

"Vala?" Vala ignored Sam and knelt down, picking up the items, clutching them close as she tried to pick them up without making the situation worse. "Hey." Sam knelt down beside her and grabbed Vala's arms. "Are you okay?"

Vala's fingers closed over a small square foil and she looked down. Her 'order' was pretty much the same week to week and she didn't know what this could be. She recognized the Tau'ri contraception device and she stared at it. "Cool, huh?" Sam said, apparently proud of her creation. "It took me a few tries and you wouldn't believe how chemically complicated it is, but it should work." Vala's fingers closed over it. "I hope I made enough. I mean, that I didn't make too many  or…how many you need or…oh for crying out loud, this is like a scene from a bad sitsom," she rambled.

"Condoms," Vala said, trying to keep her voice even. She looked up at Sam. "You made us condoms."

"I know it's not always the easiest. And I thought about birth control pills, but they're so tricky and the Asgard have no real files on hormone therapy and I don't trust my medic training—"

"You made us condoms," Vala interrupted, her chest tight with anger.

"Yeah, I—"

"Did Daniel ask you for these?"

Sam shook her head. "No. I just thought—"

"Thought what?" Vala demanded, getting to her feet.

"Vala, I just—"

"You run this ship. You run our lives. You decide how much we can have, what we should do, how we should do it!" Vala held up the wrapper. "And now you decide if we should have a child!? She shouted.

"I'm not deciding," Sam said. "I just…"

"Just what?" Vala demanded.

Sam took a breath and closed her eyes for a second. "Vala, I'm glad that you and Daniel are together but…I'd think that you'd want…I…do you really think it's smart to risk getting pregnant?"

"Risk?"

"Vala, we are trapped on ship in a time bubble and I have no idea when we'll be able to get out of it. Is this really the place to have a baby? Not to mention, when we get out of it, I don't know how the time jump could affect the fetus."

Vala tossed the condoms towards Sam. She crammed the few items in her hand into the box and picked it up off the table. "Qetesh was less annoying than you," she snarled, pushing past Sam and hurrying out the door and towards her room, praying that the corridors would remain empty.

 

SSSSSSSSS

 

The utensils clattered against the plates, the sound disproportionately loud due to the lack of conversation around the table.

Cameron looked around, glancing from Vala to Daniel to Sam to Teal'c to General Landry. Vala's eyes were focused on her plate while Sam deliberately looked up but not at anyone. Teal'c raised an eyebrow and refused to speak while Daniel simply gave a small shake of his head and lifted his shoulders in a barely perceptible shrug.

"I’m going to get back to work," Sam said, getting up from the table. She grabbed her glass and retreated. Cameron watched her exit the room and head to the left.

Vala did the same, silently rising from her place at the table and Cameron  wasn't surprised to see her take a right at the door, going the opposite way from Sam.

"Is there something I should know about?" Landry asked, sipping his coffee.

Cameron and Daniel looked at each other, neither apparently willing to speak up in front of the general. "It appears that Colonel Carter and Vala Mal Doran are experiencing personal tension," Teal'c said.

"Sam made condoms," Daniel said, looking down with embarrassment.

"Doctor Jackson?" Landry asked while Cameron fought the urge not to laugh.

"With our supplies last week, Sam made some condoms and I think it embarrassed Vala."

"Vala's not the easy to embarrass type," Cam said.

"You didn't see her when she came back," Daniel said. "She was…upset."

"Over condoms?"

"Over something," Daniel shot back. "If anything, she's frustrated—"

"Then you're not doing things right."

"Gentlemen!" Landry interrupted.

"Cameron Mitchell is correct," Teal'c said. "Vala Mal Doran is not one that is easily embarrassed." He paused. "However, she does experience far more emotions than she often reveals," he said pointedly.

Landry sighed. "This is the kind of stuff I try to stay out of. But, given the size of our surroundings, it's not something we can ignore for very long." He pushed away from the table. "Fix it," he ordered. 

 

SSSSSSSSS

 

Teal'c stepped into the darkened bridge, pausing for a moment as the door slid shut behind him. The bridge was nearly silent, the frozen status of the ship rendering the control center all but useless. The overhead lights were off, as they were in most of the ship, a move to conserve energy, so the only illumination was the starlight spilling in from the view screen and the glow of some of the control panels. 

"How long did it take you to get up here?" A soft voice drifted across the emptiness of the bridge and Teal'c stepped forward, moving so that he could see her. Colonel Carter was sitting in the captain's chair, slouched down in such a way that her head was barely visible over the back.

"Since you were not in your cabin or your laboratory, this was a logical location to search," he said, clasping his hands behind his back.

"Makes sense," she muttered, sighing softly.

"Something disturbs you," he said after a few seconds.

"Channeling Doctor Phil?" she asked.

"Our company is small, and there is little else to occupy our thoughts," he said.

"There's that," she said. She raised one hand and picked at her fingernails. "Do you think I run your lives?" she asked.

"Colonel Carter?"

"Do you think that I run your lives?" she repeated, turning to look him in the eyes. "That I control too much of what happens here. Supplies and all that?"

Teal'c thought for a moment. "You are only fulfilling the duties that General Landry has assigned to you," he said.

She nodded. "But do you think that I control too much?" she pushed.

Teal'c smiled and laid his hand on her shoulder. "You perform duties that the rest of us either lack the knowledge or inclination to perform. If any of us feel controlled, then our proper reaction should be to acquire the knowledge necessary to perform those duties ourselves." She smiled and laid her hand on top of his in a gesture of gratitude. "Did Vala Mal Doran voice any other opinions that concerned you?"

She shrugged. "Only that I was more annoying than Qetesh."

Teal'c paused for a second, considering her words. "That is not a description that I would  use for you. Yet, such things are dependant upon the perceptions of each individual person."

She snorted. "You really know how to make a girl feel good," she said.  

"Have you sought clarification of her words?"

She shook her head. "I keep thinking that she'll get over it and…I don't want to make it worse."

"Yet it is possible that inaction will exacerbate the situation more than action," he said.

"And she might wake up tomorrow morning and start planning the next birthday party," she responded.

"That is possible," he agreed. "Yet I feel that it is not probable."

She sighed and rubbed her forehead with her forefinger and thumb. "You're not gonna let it go are you?" she asked rhetorically. Teal'c merely looked at her, choosing not to verbally confirm her assertion. "Damn Jaffa tenacity," she grumbled, shooting him a glare. She pushed herself out of the chair and stepped towards him, laying a hand on his shoulder. "She jumps my ass again, it's your turn."

 

SSSSSSSSS

 

Vala lay on the bed, absently filing her nails as she glanced over at Daniel who was seated at the desk in their cabin. He was studying something on the computer, scribbling notes down every few seconds.

She would never admit it, but she loved watching him work. There was something so endearing in the way his forehead creased and his teeth worried his lower lip.  Not that she'd ever tell him, of course. There was simply no amusement in that.

The door chimed and Vala ignored it, continuing to file her nails. It chimed again and Daniel looked up, glaring at her. "Do you mind?" he asked.

"Wasn't it just last week when you were telling me that these were your quarters, thus they needed to be kept straightened to your satisfaction?" she retorted, smiling slightly at being able to throw the origin of their last argument back into his face.

Daniel sighed and pushed his chair away from the desk. "There's a big difference between picking your clothes up off the floor and answering the door," he groused. He pressed the controls and the door slid open. "Sam."

"Hey Daniel." Vala stiffened, her nail file freezing in mid motion. "Do you aah, mind if I…"

"Daniel, close the door,"  Vala ordered.

"What?" he asked.

"I'm tired and I want to take a nap. She can come back later," Vala declared, making a show of rolling over on the bed, putting her back to the door.

Vala heard him walk back across the room and pick up his books. "I'm gonna go down to the library."

"Daniel!" Vala rolled back over and sat up, glaring at his betrayal. He held up one hand and waved his open palm towards her. "I am not getting in the middle of this," he said. He pointed towards Sam. "Good luck." He pointed towards Vala. "Before you start throwing furniture around, you make a mess you WILL clean it up."

With that, he left them alone. Sam stepped further into the room to allow the door to close.  Vala glared at the interloper for a few seconds before dramatically levering herself off the bed with an exaggerated sigh. She continued to ignore Sam as she moved around the cabin, straightening up various odds and ends.

"Vala?"

"Feel free to lurk over there for a few minutes to keep up appearances then you can leave," she said as she tidied up Daniel's books. He hated it when she did that.

"I'm not leaving," Sam said.

"You may be—"

"Annoying?" Sam interrupted. Vala looked over at Sam who was standing there, her arms crossed over her chest. "You know, maybe I am," she said. "I have this focus thing and sometimes maybe I take it too far and…I probably shouldn't have made the condoms. I just…I kind of meant it as a…I dunno what I meant it as I just—"

 

"Oh for pity's sake stop!" Vala dropped the books onto the desk with a heavy thunk. Sam stared at her. "I'm…I'm not upset about the condoms," Vala said. "It was actually quite amusing, although I wonder if I shouldn't be concerned that a race advanced as yours still depends upon sheaths to prevent conception. This shaman on one of my planets used to have this tincture that—"

"Vala?"

Vala sighed and looked away for a second, her eyes falling on a brilliant blue piece of cloth draped over a chair. "I wasn't upset by the condoms," she said, stepping towards the chair. The blouse that had triggered her and Daniel's argument. The blouse that she refused to touch, even to pick it up off the floor. The blouse that mocked her and hung there like a specter of her past.

"It was something else? Something…Qetesh?" Sam asked, finally stepping further into the room. Vala looked at her. "Daniel kinda…you know." Sam shrugged. "The first couple of years after Jolinar were…I had a lot of dreams and a lot of things triggered flashbacks. I aah, for a while the smell of barbeque literally made me sick." She looked up and pushed her hands through her hair. "There was this massacre that one of her hosts survived and...charred meat is…charred meat," she said with a grimace and a shrug.

"There was a girl," Vala said after a few seconds. "Over the years there were a lot of girls, a lot of children. A lot of..." Vala looked towards the far wall, her eyes focused somewhere far away. "She liked to manipulate. It gave her pleasure in a way to twist people, to force them into doing things they didn't want to do. She gained particular pleasure from forcing them to choose between doing something abhorrent or death."

Sam stared at her for a few seconds. "So…the blue was a bad choice?" she asked softly.

Vala snorted, grateful that the woman hadn't continued with the reminiscing. The past was the past and changing it was a gift that even the Asgard hadn't mastered. Thus, as far as Vala was concerned, it was something that needed to simply remain where it was, in the past. In that spirit, she picked up the blouse and held it in front of her. "It is simply not a shade that suits me," she declared. She handed it towards Sam. "I think I'm more of a red person."

Sam smiled and took it from her. "I think you are. It's probably a bit presumptuous of me to just make things without asking. And, you know, I seem to be pretty unimaginative in the clothing area. Maybe you could come and help me, see if we can liven up the data base."

Vala thought about it for a few seconds before smiling, an intriguing thought flitting through her brain. "You know, the fashion sense of everyone on this ship is sorely lacking."

"Really?" Sam asked.

"Especially Muscles. Black simply is not his color."

Sam laughed and held up her hand. "General Landry is immune," she said. Vala pouted but Sam remained firm. "If we make him angry, he'll make us stop. But if it amuses him, we could experiment for weeks."

Vala smiled, grinning widely as a thought occurred to her. "So...who do you think gets the first thong?"

 

~Fin~


End file.
